Thursday, May 28, 2015

French Quarter-Road Trippin' With Bonne Bell

Hello everyone and welcome to stop #5 of my Bonne Bell Road Trip. I hope you enjoy this stop in New Orleans!

Today's featured polish is French Quarter. First of all let's discuss the polish. French Quarter is a pink leaning neutral that is charged with gold micro glitter. The gold shimmer is subtle but shows up. This is a perfect "on the job polish", but as you can see with some of my other ideas, French Quarter is a great canvas for nail art and stamping. For me this has been the thinner formula of the Bonne Bell group. I did use three coats to made sure my nail was completely covered. As usual, I tried two extra ideas. I stamped and also did a fishtail design pulling in Bonne Bell's Key West for extra color accent.

So now, on with the up close and personal shots. You can see the gold shimmer in the bottle and nails in the next two shots. All of these shots were taken with my new natural lighting system for my light box. I love how my polishes have looked. I will never fret over a cloudy or rainy day again!

Even closer.............

I tried two things with this stamping idea and am not sure how I feel about it. The bottom half of my nail is stamped with Gal's GA36 which is the part I really like.

This plate is part of a 25 plate set. I found it on Amazon. Just know, it took over a month to get to me. The set was only $12.99 and came from China (which I didn't notice when I ordered). It took so long in arriving, I had completely forgotten that I had ordered it. I probably would have eventually remembered it, but it was a nice surprise!

Then I tried then to add something like golden raindrops. Raindrops and dewdrops have a history of getting me in trouble design wise. From the distance it looks good but I'm not sure about the closeup.

DRK calls this stamping polish Diet Brown. It looks purple to me and went perfectly with French Quarter. It is a great stamping polish. DRK just doesn't have to many colors to choose from.

Here's the design I didn't want to take off. I had always wanted to try a fishtail and loved this. I first drew the lines with my Stripe Rite gold, added linear lines and glitter (LA Color's Art Deco gold) in some, left some alone so French Quarter would shine through and then added Key West for some color pop.

And a closer view.............

I used French Quarter for my Monday mani. It's looks like Fall is this photo but it felt like Fall. Which shows you, this is a year round color.

When I do one of these road trips, I spend about a week wearing and using whatever color I am visiting. It gives me an idea how the color will wear and how it works with other ideas design wise. I thought French Quarter wore great and I really didn't get tired of it.

That's it for this round. I hope you enjoyed heading down to the French Quarter. It's more southern ports next. I am heading to Miami!Take care and until we meet again, Polish On!